Okay, which one of you forgot to tell me about the clock going back one hour this weekend? Come on don't be afraid, there's nothing to worry about ... When I arrived this morning, thinking it was little over eight, I was surprised how little vehicles there were on the parking lot here at my work. While I was walking to the car I remembered my brother in law having a week off last week so I figured 'oh, now it's our turn'. Right ... Then, I guess about 5 seconds ago, my eye fell on the clock that's within Windows and it showed that it was ... little over eight ... again! Then it hit me: I missed the summer time to winter time change over the weekend ... again ... ;-) So now I'm looking for whoever forgot to call me and find why he or she didn't. That person probably thought 'let's not tell him this time, at least he'll be at work on time once this week' and I have to admit that this is a pretty solid way to achieve that *grin* But I'm a warned man now so this will not happen again soon. (But it probably will when we change back but lucky for me that's not for the next half year or so ;-)

In my (computer ;-) case it's RAID 1 to be exact. RAID, when used as an abbreviation in the world of computer electronics, means Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks and there are a couple of ways of implementing and using this feature. RAID 0 This configuration is the fastest of all the RAID levels, it uses a technique called data striping (see below) and requires at least 2 hard disks. RAID 1 This level uses a pair of hard disks at a time to provide fault tolerance (there is no performance benefit) and requires at least 2 hard disks. Using a technique called disk mirroring (see below) the same data is written to both disks at a time, so if one hard disk crashes then the same data is available from the remaining hard disk. RAID 2 The RAID 2 configuration uses data striping (see below) and a fault tolerance technique called parity (see below), it requires at least 3 disks. Two (or more) of the disks are used to store the data and one disk is used to store the parity (see below) information. RAID 2 strips the data into bits which is why RAID 3 (below) is a better implementation as it strips the data into bytes instead. RAID 3 A common RAID level similar to RAID 2 except that the data is striped into bytes and not bits, giving a performance benefit over RAID 2. RAID 4 RAID 4 strips the data into blocks and uses a parity drive for fault tolerance, at least 3 drives are required, not a commonly used implementation. RAID 5 A popular RAID configuration utilizing at least 3 drives. Data is striped across the drives in bytes, the parity data for one particular drive is stored on another drive allowing the data to be rebuilt using the parity technique. Since I'm on a bit of a tight budget but wanted a fault tolerance system RAID 1 was the way to go for me. So I got myself two 250GB 7200RPM 16MB cache SATA150 drives and set them up in a RAID 1 configuration in my PC's bios. Then I encountered another problem: Windows needed to know what controller it should activate as at that point the setup didn't recognize the correct controller. Now I knew I had to have a floppy disk somewhere with those drivers on it but finding it was going to be a bit of a problem. Luckily for me Bas took my advice on which motherboard to buy and because we bought our upgrades at the same time we now have the very same basic configuration and therefore also the same motherboard. So I asked him to look up the floppy because I know that a) he's a bit more organized than I am and b) he only has about 5 floppy's so it should be pretty easy to find it. Specially when compared to me, because I would have had to go through piles of floppy's and CD's to find it. When I got the disk from him the Windows setup could continue and was finished about 20 minutes later. And that's the state things are in right now. Tonight I'm going to see what data can be restored from the other drive so I can hopefully finish the whole business up this weekend.

Because I'm still not able to use my computer I've Sunday started to watch the 24 series on DvD. Stefan had told me he liked it very much and loaned me the first season, or day if you will, so I could have a look.

But since I love sim racing a whole lot more than watching TV and I've been kind of busy lately I just never got round to watch it. Until now of course, with my PC not working I now have more spare time than I want.

So I started Sunday evening with the first day and am now somewhere in hour 9 I think. I have to be honest, it's good. I like the way it's put together and since I put in the DvD I've not seen a dull moment.

The fact that everything is presented in real time is not brand new (I think Nick of time with Johnny Depp was the first movie that used that principle) but it's done very nicely, specially since there is more than one story line combined.

Since I haven't got my spare hard disk yet I'll probably watch a couple of hours again tonight, and during the reinstallation of my computer tomorrow I can again have a few more. It's kind of gripping and I really want to know how the day ends now.

Yesterday afternoon, just when I got home after watching another great A1GP race with Bas my computer started to slow down and after a while came to a halt. At first I thought something had just messed up the memory as usual and restarted the system but when that took about twenty minutes in total I knew there was something very wrong with it. And if I still had any doubts the amount of error messages that came up when I finally had my desktop again was no fun either. 'Can't write file, data lost', 'Unable to write to disk', 'File not found error', etc. This means that the hard drive is about to go haywire and I need to get the data off it before it finally does completely and I'll be unable to access it. And of course (as usual) I do not have a very recent backup so it's very important to me that I do get the data back. All of it. During my lunch break I'm going to get a new hard drive and if I can finance it I'll get two of the same type so the chances on me loosing important data are then reduced to zero because of the RAID configuration I'm putting them in. Let's just hope that I haven't lost anything, because that would really tick me off big-time.

Today's topic: goals. Goal: 1. The purpose toward which an endeavor is directed; an objective. 2. Sports a. The finish line of a race. b. A specified structure or zone into or over which players endeavor to advance a ball or puck. c. The score awarded for such an act. 3. Linguistics a. A noun or noun phrase referring to the place to which something moves. b. See patient (sense 2). Whenever you talk to people and at a certain point tell them what your dreams in life are they tend to smile understandingly and tell you how good it is to have goals. What they are probably meaning is more something like 'well that sounds really difficult but we hope you will succeed.' I've been thinking about those so called goals in life a lot lately. And wondering about how good it is to have them in the first place as I've now reached a point in my life where I don't see me achieving any or a whole lot of the goals I had, say, fifteen years ago. At all. That doesn't mean that I'm unhappy about the way my life is going so far, not at all, but there are most definitely times when I wished I took a slightly different path through life, because then I could or even would have reached some of these childhood dreams. This may sound a little pessimistic right now as I'm only thirty three years old now and there is hopefully still a lot of time on this earth ahead of me. And the tone of this post probably has something to do with the fact that since my job change I'm a bit too busy for comfort with a lot of things messing with my head. Life stuff, you know, like children for example. What do you tell them when the time comes? To set goals at will and pursue them for the rest of their life's? Or do you tell them to be modest about setting goals and carefully think them over so they have a better chance of achieving them in the future? I don't know yet. And now that I'm thinking about it ... If someone had told me, when I was a child, that the things I wanted in life were never going to happen, being the stubborn guy that I am, I probably wouldn't have believed them anyway ;-) So that wouldn't have done any good or prevented me from having this kind of dissolution now that I'm all grown up and stuff ... These kind of subjects are always tricky I guess and we'll probably never get the answer we want out of them. And you know what? That might just be the whole deal about goals. It can be a kind of support to grab hold off when your feeling a little down. 'Wait until I grow up, because then I will ... '. We need those thoughts I think, otherwise what's the whole point of us being here in the first place. I need to quit this topic or else I'm afraid I'll be loosing it. But it's stuff like this that keeps creeping up behind me when I have a few spare moments to think. Preferably when I've just gone to bed, waiting to fall asleep. Then is the most dangerous time of day for my head. It has nothing better to do than play all these 'what if' scenarios with my mind and it's getting increasingly better at it too sometimes. So ... what do you want to be when you grow up? :-)

This is what I weekend should be like more often: nice and easy. I asked (and got) the Saturday off so I had the two whole days to myself. I got up around nine and first did some studying as in the morning I'm better in remembering things, more sharp if you will. Then I did some necessary housekeeping and some shopping and around one o clock I couldn't resist any longer and fired up GT Legends, my brand new addiction, because I had some serious driving to do :-) Those of you who have been following my little writing over here will know that I'm not usually tempted to do some writing about a specific game or, as in this case, racing SIM. But this one is just so incredibly cool … I simply can't help myself ;-) GT Legends is a racing simulation which offers us the possibility to drive no less than around twenty five different models of classic racing cars. And for a lot of them there are different paint jobs so in total we have little over ninety different cars to play around with. That's right: ninety ... But you don't get to drive them all right from the start, no Sir. You'll have to earn both the status and cash to be able to drive them. So what do you start with then? A Mini Cooper and a couple of credits spare change. Mini Cooper? But you said it was a racing simulation, right? Yes I did and trust me, that little Cooper can do some serious hunting on the track. Sure, when it comes to a straight line most of the other cars will leave it eating dust, but when it comes to braking points and speed through the corners that little wonder on wheels will just keep on going where other will have to slow down. 'Just smile and wave boys'. The key word here is cup races which you'll have to finish. And while doing so you'll win money, bonus and other cars and unlock more tracks so you can race on them outside the cup races and host races on them too. Right now 'all' that's left to drive are the cup E races which are the long(er) races. Think twenty or sixty lap long to get an idea. I've started the FiA TC`65 championship because that's where I will (finally) win the Ford GT40 :-D I've been hoping for a racing sim that featured that GT40 for as long as I'm playing those sims and finally it's here. I can't wait to put my foot down in one of those, it's got to be awesome. Just awesome.

Remember little Eva? Well that very same little Eva Jolie is gradually growing into a small child now, getting bigger by the day. Tonight I went to Wageningen again and when I came in she was sitting in her diner seat, at the table all by herself, looking around quite happy trying to see everything that was happening around her. Seeing her in that chair made me realize how fast things are progressing with her and how quickly she's adapting to and learning new things. Just think of it. In a period of about three to four weeks time she's gone from being a baby, just lying pretty stationary on her back and receiving breast feeding only to rolling around the entire living room floor and eating 'normal' food ... in a chair! I guess for her it's special in two ways: sitting right up, and the fact that doing so shows her an entirely different and new perspective of the world around her. Until she was in that chair the only version, if you will, of the world she saw was the one five inches from the ground. Then all of a sudden you're three and a half feet up! Trust me, that is a completely other world you're looking at then. When she was to bed the three of us watched a movie (which lasted 'slightly' longer than was printed on the box ;-) after which I went home and I'm going to get me some sleep now after taking care of some important overseas emails from a good friend. See you all tomorrow.

Even though there are still lots of things to do but I do like the new base setup of the site very much. New template, new style, new banner and when I get the time to work on it a bit more there are going to be new color settings for the site too. The 'old' look had been here for about a year and a half so it was time for a change anyway. Add to that the fact that the blue/black letters/background combination might have looked very nice, it wasn't always that readable. I hope to have changed this for the better but, as usual, only time will tell so we are just going to have to work with it and see what happens.

Last night I had one of the most exhausting and at the same time very exiting competition races of all time. We were racing our Simracing.nl competition race with Grand Prix Legends on the wonderful track of Monza and boy did I have fun over there. The start of the race was a mess, nothing more nothing less. Unfortunately I had a really good start and found myself right in the middle of all the mayhem, unable to avoid a collision. So the race hadn't been longer than about half a mile and I had to take my one and only shift-r to get a new car. The rest of the race I had a very enjoyable and, for our usual standards, record breaking long, battle with Bas in his Honda which lasted all the way to the end of the race. The only thing that stopped me from finishing in front of him was the fuel shortage I ran into. For some reason I either used up to much fuel while catching up Bas' Honda or I just didn't put enough fuel in the BRM in the first place. We'll probably never know but that small detail didn't keep me from having a blast and looking forward to the next race :-)

This was the kind weekend everyone needs every once and a while. It started off pretty good on Friday when my dad called me and gave me the option to have the Saturday off. After thinking about it for about two seconds I thankfully accepted because I could sure use the extra time off. Great timing! So the Saturday was even more relaxed than it normally is. I slept a bit longer but was out of bed at around ten already and first did some housecleaning. After that I studied for a couple of hours and then, after doing some shopping, I sat myself down behind the PC and worked some more on my cars. In the evening and beginning of the night I raced nine Americans on-line on Le Mans and even though most of them were a bit faster than me I was still able to keep up the pace for the first half of the race. Then I made a small mistake and went off track in the Porsche curves, severely damaging my car. It was able to get me to the pit lane (which luckily was nearby at that point of the track) and after repairs I still finished the race, but was two laps down in the end. This was a classic case of really wanting to drive faster than you normally do/can and I know I can only do that for a small period of time. But not the entire race as that's just too tense. In the end I still had great fun and that's what counts. And my Sunday was ... well ... perfect :-) With me being so d*mn busy during the weekdays it had been quite a while since I saw little Eva, my sister and bro so we had some catching up to do. Specially with Eva who has grown beyond believe. It's almost a small child now, instead of the more or less helpless baby I saw a couple of weeks ago. She is growing up so incredibly fast, it's really unbelievable. And she's getting more mobile every day it seems. She's now perfectly capable of rolling from her stomach to her back and so on and so fort moving around the room. So were you previously could lay her down and get something from the kitchen and find her there when you returned, now you'll probably find her in a totally different place. It's a big world to explore and it looks even bigger from ground level :-) Must be pretty exiting for her I can imagine. And she's just Miss Happiness herself, I mean you can't look at her for more than two to three seconds before getting the most adorable smile ever cast your way. And when she's really having a good time and laughing out loud you can't help but laughing too. Her laughter comes straight from her heart and goes equally straight in to yours. She's imply amazing, a true world wonder. I really got to go there more often, and not in the least since playing a couple of minutes with Eva is enough to recharge me completely. We also had a little celebration to do because some time ago our GPRT forum hit five hundred posts and we thought that was quite a milestone. So we decided that a movie was a good option to have a little feast and we watched the third in line of the Harry Potter series, which was an okay movie. We're almost up for the next party as since then the post count on the forum has almost reached seven hundred posts now ... I think I'll start thinking about which movie is next :-) Anyway I had a great day and I made a promise, to both my sister and bro and myself, not to let the next time I come there be taking as long as this one.